Storm Brews on Muslim Girl's Hijab

The father of a 13-year-old Muslim girl on Saturday threatened to sue if school officials prohibit his daughter from wearing the religion's traditional headscarf.

The headscarf, or hijab, "is more a cultural than a religious symbol. We have to respect our traditions," the girl's father Ali El Hadi told reporters.

Backed by the Association of Moroccan and Immigrant Workers in Spain, El Hadi says the test is coming Tuesday, when his daughter, Fatima, turns up at her new school.

Fatima, who arrived in Spain five months ago, was initially granted a place in a semiprivate Roman Catholic school in Madrid. She never took her seat because that school insisted she wear a uniform and refused to let her use a hijab.

Fatima's father, who has been in Spain 13 years, then applied for a place in a state school. Fatima was accepted by the Juan de Herrera Institute in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a historic town just west of Madrid.

But on Friday, the school's director, Delia Duro, ruled against the hijab, saying it was a symbol of discrimination against women. Education Minister Pilar del Castillo backed the headmaster and said a school's rules must be respected by all the pupils.

"The father has to understand that just as there are a series of rights, there are also a series of rules of coexistence," said Del Castillo.

There are no legal restrictions on wearing particular garments in Spanish state schools with each left to set its own standards.

The school director said a final decision would be taken on Monday by the school's board but few expect her ruling to change.

Meanwhile, Fatima's father's insistence that the girl should be allowed go to school "without conditions" is gathering support.

"Why should these girls stop wearing a scarf when the Christian girls wear little crosses?" Tomas Calvo, head of the Migration and Racism Study Center at Madrid's Complutense University, said in the daily El Pais.

Gaspar Llamazares, leader of Parliament's third-ranking United Left coalition, described the issue as "racist" and "another example of the government's intolerance."

The issue of Muslim children wearing hijabs or other garments to school has come up in several countries in recent years. In France, a controversy raged in the early 1990s when three girls were expelled for wearing the scarf. The government eventually stepped in and ruled that such garments should be permitted in most classes.

Although it is a secular state, Spain is predominantly Roman Catholic with a population of 41 million. It has a legal immigrant population of some 1 million people, most of whom come from Latin America.